If the vanilla SAM3XE chip like you can order it from Farnell works with own-built boards, I might develop a smaller version of the Due. I developed a variant (actually: a shield) for the 8bit Arduino for use in industrial environments (think ruggedcircuits but better :p ), but boards with the dimensions of the Due or the Mega don't fit in our DIN-rail enclosures.

Perhaps it is possible to minimize the dimensions to something in the range of a Uno by omitting some pinheaders. Then you would have the same number of input/outputs of a regular Arduino, but with the processing power of the Due.

The Teensy 3.0 is now entering general release if you wanted an ARM board in a smaller package than the DUE. The Teensy is not the DUE, so be sure to understand what it offers and what it doesn't. Teensy 3.0 uses a modified Arduino 1.0.1 IDE.

The Teensy 3.0 is now entering general release if you wanted an ARM board in a smaller package than the DUE. The Teensy is not the DUE, so be sure to understand what it offers and what it doesn't. Teensy 3.0 uses a modified Arduino 1.0.1 IDE.

I have one at home, awaiting torture. I can't tell you how excited I am about these little gems. The teensy is aimed at a much smaller market but I also happen to think that the Due is not only overkill but that it's design misses the sweet spot by virtue of shoehorning a 32-bit architecture into a 8-bit legacy interface. This 144-pin monstrosity seems to have been selected because one could put out a board in a similar I/O factor configuration as the Mega. But IMO they should have broken from past shield designs for the 32-bit architecture to eliminate the possibility of fried CPUs, enable improved I/O interfacing, among other issues.

For me, the 64-pin chip on the teensy offers plenty of I/O out of the box while still being bread-boardable. And the chip is 50% less to buy than the SAM processor on the Due, i.e. about the same price difference as a 328 vs. 1284. And the teensy price vs. Due price reflects that too. I am considering re-designing my DAQ boards around a standard dual pin header for the Teensy. It would eliminate a lot of the complexity from my boards and the CPUs can be re-purposed as needed later. Never mind the on-board RTC, 16-bit ADC (vs. 12 on the Due) etc.

But! There is something to be said for the benefits of older 5V-based legacy devices in terms of their ability to drive signals, etc. in ways that the more modern chips cannot.

While not a Mini/Nano, I look forward to an ethernet Due. Phy ethernet and SD card can do some pretty awesome things. I have a Sam3X-EK at work for a project and the demo is pretty slick with a rich web interface but the demo is based on BeRTOS which doesn't have a large community and has custom drivers. Atmel just added "native" lwIP support to asf and will add SD card drivers in the next version(November hopefully) Are the Due drivers ASF-based or from scratch because of licensing issues?

I wonder how the Due firmware would work with the Sam3X-EK, Atmel doesn't even sell the processor(SAM3X8H) on the board.